Networked guns test in CA and TX

[dragon]

Pretty good idea

Police in California and Texas Test Networked Guns

A chip that tracks how a police officer’s gun is being used could prove useful in investigations and court cases.

By Caleb Garling on November 13, 2014

Why It Matters

More than 30,000 people die from gunshots each year in the United States.

YardArm’s wireless chip, which fits into the handle of a handgun, is shown to the right.

When a police officer draws a firearm he or she often doesn’t have an opportunity to radio for backup.

YardArm, a California-based company, is building technology that will automatically alert headquarters in such situations. The company makes a chip that goes into the handle of a regular firearm and transmits data over a cell-phone network connection. The data transmitted includes the location of a gun and whether it has been unholstered or discharged. The company is also working to track the direction in which a gun is pointing. The data can be fed to a police dispatch system or viewed on a smartphone.

Founded in 2013, YardArm started out making a consumer product for monitoring a firearm’s location. But since many American gun owners object to technology or policies aimed at regulating firearms, it did not find many customers.

“You have a social demand for smart gun technology, but not necessarily a market demand,” says Jim Schaff, YardArm’s vice president of marketing. “As a consumer product, it’s going to be a long road.”

Gun owners didn’t flock to YardArm, but law enforcement remained interested. Technology that tracks officers’ action is slowly gaining acceptance as police chiefs and officers realize that the data can help clear them of wrongdoing and save litigation costs. Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly common for many ordinary objects and devices to come with Internet connectivity.

This schematic shows the YardArm chip slotted into the handle of a Glock handgun.

The gun industry is gradually taking notice of these trends. The gunmaker Beretta already offers the i-Protect, a sensor that goes on the front of the gun and captures data on the weapon’s use. Meanwhile Taser, which makes a gun that delivers a nonlethal electric shock, also sells head-worn cameras to help police and security workers document events in the field.

“Dash-cams really set precedent,” Schaff says. “When it comes down to it, monitoring technology helps more than it hurts.”

YardArm is holding tests to hone the tracking accuracy with police departments in Santa Cruz, California, and Carrollton, Texas. The technology has been tested at firing ranges, but not during active police duty.

“It is going so well we don’t even know it’s there,” says Santa Cruz sheriff Phil Wowak. “The product brings so much data that we’re going to have to figure out how to respond to every element.”

Yardarm plans to start selling the hardware and tracking service in mid-2015. The next goal is to capture the direction in which a gun was fired, but Schaff says this aspect of the technology needs to be improved. And despite the rebuff, YardArm has not given up on consumers. “We absolutely believe there’s a market of consumers perfectly happy deploying the technology,” Schaff says.

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[Havok]

Good. If there is one industry in this country that needs more oversight and control it is the Law Enforcement Industry.

[Darmalus]

Good to see this close to deployment.

I can't really see a consumer market for this springing up outside private security. I can, however, see a future where all new guns are required have it pre-installed and functional once it is refined and rugged enough.

[LaCroix]

They should bring a modern, miniaturized version of this

into the network, and all "was the shooting justified" problems just got a lot easier to solve.

[Havok]

But... but then my gun won't look cool.

[Zixinus]

I don't know, that frame on the thing makes it look more streamlined and futuristic.

[LaCroix]

But... but then my gun won't look cool.

With today's technology, it won't be any bigger than a cigarette butt.
Put it into a 'tacticool' led-torchlight or laser target, and nobody would notice.

[Covenant]

But... but then my gun won't look cool.

We could design it to look like the Mk2 Lawgiver. There's already an obvious under-barrel camera location.

[Havok]

But... but then my gun won't look cool.

We could design it to look like the Mk2 Lawgiver. There's already an obvious under-barrel camera location.

Can it have a giant dial on it?!

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I could see a long range argument for requiring all new guns to be made with a camera. The footage is stored inside of a memory which by that point can record every single firing for say a life of one million rounds. This is only stored on the firearm, but if the gun is seized for an investigation, law enforcement has a right to view the footage. This would mingle privacy rights and legal concerns about gun tracking very well, since you don't have any gun registration like bullet marking schemes effectively become. Say the camera activates whenever the safety is off. Once we have terabyte storage thumb-drives, this looks like an increasingly viable proposition, especially because the footage doesn't need to be incredibly high quality.

[Adam Reynolds]

What's to stop people from letting the battery stay dead?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What's to stop people from letting the battery stay dead?

How much battery would it really need?

[Simon_Jester]

I think this is a good idea. The trickiest part of the whole concept is a battery for the gun camera that only uses power when the trigger is pulled (otherwise it'll probably run dry over the multi-year lifetime of the weapon, I would think).

That technology... I suspect exists, but I don't know anything about it so you couldn't prove it exists by what I know.

[LaCroix]

People would just paint over the lense if it were mandatory.
Or if they tried to do something shifty.

You could never use this thing to find criminal use - only to justify a perceived legal shooting (cops, home defense).

[salm]

I think this is a good idea. The trickiest part of the whole concept is a battery for the gun camera that only uses power when the trigger is pulled (otherwise it'll probably run dry over the multi-year lifetime of the weapon, I would think).

That technology... I suspect exists, but I don't know anything about it so you couldn't prove it exists by what I know.

Why is the battery a problem? Is there anything impractical about recharging or swapping the battery?
As for energy saving, I´m sure it would be trivial to design something that only activates the camera when the gun is held or removed from it´s holster or something like that.

[Zixinus]

Yes, but I wonder about the activation life. Ideally you want the camera to trigger right before the trigger is pulled. The camera needs to be activated and finish its capture before the shot is fired or all you'll get is a big flash dominating the picture. So the camera must activate on a moment's notice (not something I notice with my webcam) yet must also be high-detail enough to be useful. Are there cameras that can do that?

As for battery and whatever on the lens: it would be considered a sign of guilt or carelessness. The cameras would be city/state property and thus would be regularly inspected, with officers expected to put in fresh batteries in every time there is a swap in batteries. Dishonest cops will find a way to game the system (people who don't want to play along usually do sooner or later), but it will complicate things for them. While honest cops will have photographic evidence of just who was shooting at them when they start shooting.

[salm]

Wouldn´t it be more usefull to have the camera activate as soon as the gun is drawn as opposed to when the gun is fired? Context is usually very important and besides documenting the shots itself it would also document the rest of how the person handles the gun.

<edit> I mean unless they don´t have body cameras anyway and the pistol cam is only used to determin where and from where they are firing exactly.</edit>

[TheFeniX]

I honestly wouldn't mind something like this on my carry weapon, provided it didn't increase the footprint as concealed holsters generally have issue with under-barrel accessories.

But for the general firearm pool? What's the point? Requiring a functioning camera assumes a majority of people who use guns for crime are legally allowed to carry or even own a firearm. And that they have something vested in making sure their illegal gun is somehow legal. They don't. So, there's absolutely nothing stopping them from smashing the lens, removing the battery and/or the camera, or just picking up one of the millions of older weapons lying around that doesn't have a camera.

I will say, that there likely exists a class of criminal that would love to keep a memento of the crime committed and might actually embrace something like this. Then again, those types are usually caught by mundane means, being morons and all.

[Purple]

I honestly wouldn't mind something like this on my carry weapon, provided it didn't increase the footprint as concealed holsters generally have issue with under-barrel accessories.

But for the general firearm pool? What's the point? Requiring a functioning camera assumes a majority of people who use guns for crime are legally allowed to carry or even own a firearm. And that they have something vested in making sure their illegal gun is somehow legal. They don't. So, there's absolutely nothing stopping them from smashing the lens, removing the battery and/or the camera, or just picking up one of the millions of older weapons lying around that doesn't have a camera.

I will say, that there likely exists a class of criminal that would love to keep a memento of the crime committed and might actually embrace something like this. Then again, those types are usually caught by mundane means, being morons and all.

I get the impression that the point would be to give people who shoot others in self defense an extra source of proof that they were in the right.

[Simon_Jester]

People would just paint over the lense if it were mandatory.
Or if they tried to do something shifty.

Painting over the lens on your gun camera would be an illegal modification to the firearm, just like sawing the barrel off your shotgun.

Also, pet peeve, there is one 'e' in 'lens.' It's from the Latin.

Why is the battery a problem? Is there anything impractical about recharging or swapping the battery?

A lot of guns simply aren't taken out of a sealed container often, and need minimal maintenance if they haven't been fired. Hence the problem with people letting batteries run down.

[TheFeniX]

I get the impression that the point would be to give people who shoot others in self defense an extra source of proof that they were in the right.

Mandatory for police and optional for civilian use can go a long way towards dealing with liability when using a gun in defense of self. The problem is how easy any crime fighting uses (WRT intentional felony use) are bypassed. But no one is going to want electronics on 100% of their weapons, especially when the crime-fighting potential is 0.

Either way, law would never pass to require this for civilian purchase due to it backdooring in a gun registry.

People would just paint over the lense if it were mandatory.
Or if they tried to do something shifty.

Painting over the lens on your gun camera would be an illegal modification to the firearm, just like sawing the barrel off your shotgun.

Which doesn't change the fact sawed-off shotguns still maintain a semblance of popularity among criminals due to the cheap nature of the Mossberg pump and the ease with which the modification is made to increase concealability. Besides, for most people using a firearm for crime, just finding a gun on them is a felony charge. Not to mention, having a firearm with filed serials numbers is another felony.

Only the dumbest of criminals is going to choose providing evidence of murder (if they haven't dumped the gun in the river or sold it off) over a "modified weapon" charge because their gun had pictures of the person they shot.

[Simon_Jester]

Note: I just realized Duchess worked out a suggestion that gets around the "turn the camera on fast" issue: have the gun camera turn on whenever the safety's off.

And here I was thinking in terms of the camera turning on when the trigger is pulled. I guess for some reason my brain was stuck thinking of gun cameras on military fighter planes, which was goofy.

I get the impression that the point would be to give people who shoot others in self defense an extra source of proof that they were in the right.

Mandatory for police and optional for civilian use can go a long way towards dealing with liability when using a gun in defense of self. The problem is how easy any crime fighting uses (WRT intentional felony use) are bypassed. But no one is going to want electronics on 100% of their weapons, especially when the crime-fighting potential is 0.

Either way, law would never pass to require this for civilian purchase due to it backdooring in a gun registry.

Could you expand on your use of the verb "to backdoor?"

People would just paint over the lense if it were mandatory.
Or if they tried to do something shifty.

Painting over the lens on your gun camera would be an illegal modification to the firearm, just like sawing the barrel off your shotgun.

Which doesn't change the fact sawed-off shotguns still maintain a semblance of popularity among criminals due to the cheap nature of the Mossberg pump and the ease with which the modification is made to increase concealability. Besides, for most people using a firearm for crime, just finding a gun on them is a felony charge. Not to mention, having a firearm with filed serials numbers is another felony.

Only the dumbest of criminals is going to choose providing evidence of murder (if they haven't dumped the gun in the river or sold it off) over a "modified weapon" charge because their gun had pictures of the person they shot.

I agree, and I'm not saying this would often pick up evidence of crimes. However, it would help in certain crimes of passion, thefts where a gun is used immediately afterward, and would be useful in clearing the name of persons engaged in self-defense.

[LaCroix]

I agree, and I'm not saying this would often pick up evidence of crimes. However, it would help in certain crimes of passion, thefts where a gun is used immediately afterward, and would be useful in clearing the name of persons engaged in self-defense.

AS I said, this is only for people who want to defend themselves before court, others, though, will unload the gun, and put it in a microwave to fry the chip, or use a cut cable to cause a short circuit on the gun. That should fry the memory chip pretty well. Absense of picture data is damning, but still better in court than a certain proof.

[Zixinus]

Wouldn´t it be more usefull to have the camera activate as soon as the gun is drawn as opposed to when the gun is fired? Context is usually very important and besides documenting the shots itself it would also document the rest of how the person handles the gun.

Of course, I don't know why I was stuck thinking in analog-camera mode. Tasers already have such a camera embedded into them (although at the price of about 440$). They may be a good start, although it records in black-and-white only.

[Purple]

Could you expand on your use of the verb "to backdoor?"

Basically he means to say that if you make it mandatory for every gun to have a camera you are going to have to find some way of enforcing it. And this can easily be used to justify some sort of centralized registry thats there to keep track of who owns guns, something that americans are apparently pathologically terrified of.